


Three Special Lads

by gentlearmor



Category: Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy XV, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Not Really Crack, Ominous, but not serious - Freeform, canon personalities and backstories, honestly i spell eren's last name all the ways, jaegerbomb!, mostly jaeger, there are facades afoot, where'd everyone go? bingo?, you'll learn their points being pulled from in the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29832630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlearmor/pseuds/gentlearmor
Summary: Three protagonists from three entirely different worlds with three entirely different ways of life are stuck together with no explanation, in a weird amalgamation of places they remember.Note: You don't need to know all three of these to read this.  Just embrace the nonsensical existence of this nonsense with the character(s) you know.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll be over here in my lawn chair tree throne with an Ebony, watching a giant naked person defend his drip.
> 
> (I’m trying to resolve my depression in a happier way, rather than ruining the lives of everyone for once.)
> 
> Anyway, I don’t expect much traction on this, because it’s purely for my amusement (though I hope someone else finds it amusing), and this part focuses a lot more on dialogue than narrative action. I typically write more narrative than is here, but I just wanted these idiots to talk. If I do more, it’ll no doubt shift back to my normal style.
> 
> If there's interest or if I do continue this because I'm an insane woman, I don't intend for it to hit most the explicit content notes of other things I've written, but these three come from pretty violent worlds, so the violence will likely ramp up. If there are necessary warnings, I'll make sure they happen here in the respective chapter. My mind changes like the seconds in a day.
> 
> Do you need to know all three canons to read this? Absolutely not. You can learn alongside whichever of them you *do* know, and can be wholly confused with them. Or not care at all, as one might appear to.

“I’m stuck here with two teenagers.”

“I’m twenty, you asshole.”

“Two. Teenagers.”

The doubling down of that made the 20-year-old throw his hands in the air, while the older man with white hair and a passion for the color red pointed at him. “I’m calling you Emo.” He pointed to the brown-haired teen with the weird uniform. “And I’m calling you Midriff.”

“My name’s Eren Jaeger. What’s—”

“Your last name’s Jaeger?” the white haired man asked, like he just fell into a gold mine.

Eren stared at him, suspicious. Slowly, instead of asking why that was so special, he asked, “…what’s a midriff?”

“It’s that coat thing you’re wearing,” the man in red declared.

“That’s not a midriff,” the one in black snapped. He looked at the boy. “I’m Noctis.”

Eren made a face at the midriff stuff, then looked to the older man. “Who’re you?”

“Name’s Dante,” the man replied. “And since I’m the only adult here, you two are going to have to do what I say.”

“I am literally an adult,” Noctis Lucis Caelum repeated dryly.

“Now, let’s figure out what the hell this place is,” Dante said as he paced out a bit, looking around. “And how we can get home. It looks like my home, kinda. Those tall buildings aren’t a part of it.”

“Those buildings look like my home,” Noctis replied, eying the smaller, older looking buildings with an architecture he didn’t know, versus the sweeping metal and glass skyscrapers beyond the immediate area.

Both men looked to Eren for his input. He stared back, green eyes wide, before standing up from where he’d been sitting on his knees. “How the hell are you two so calm about this?!” he exclaimed. “This isn’t normal!”

“Pretty normal for me,” Noctis said, Dante shrugging in agreement. For Noctis, he’d been getting swept into strange worlds for quite a few years by that point. None that looked like the apparent mishmash they found themselves in, but there was a first for everything. “Anything look familiar to you?”

Eren was left speechless for a few moments. What was any of this? Where were his friends, and…? When those moments passed, he closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. “The wall,” he said finally, without looking at either.

Noctis and Dante looked out, and finally took notice of the massive wall in the distance. Dante whistled at it, while Noctis placed his hands on his hips, falling deep into thought. “Are these the aspects that we notice the most in our different homes? My city has a wall, but you could never see it from this distance.”

“Does it matter?” Dante asked. “There was a way in here, so there’s gonna be a way out.”

“’Does it matter?’ You’re the one that started identifying things!” Eren exclaimed once again. What the hell was with that guy in particular?

“Just hang the fuck on a second,” Noctis complained, waving Dante off. “It’s still a place we don’t understand. Why does it exist, why is it displaying such unique features from our three worlds? What’s wrong with it?”

“We won’t find out any of that crap just hanging out around here,” Dante said. He stooped down and picked up a sword that looked so impractically large, if one asked Eren, and put it against his shoulder like it weighed nothing. He wasn’t going to say it, but he was smelling the stench of demons around. They needed to find them and he needed to handle them before they started trying to move in on the kids. “I see Midriff’s armed, but what about you, Emo?”

Noctis rolled his eyes and gave up. “Yeah, I’m armed.”

“Then let’s go, boys.”

Dante had to wonder why he was stuck with them. Wouldn’t Nero have been a better choice, being in their age range?

As he started down the street, after the smell of demons unknown to the other two, Noctis lingered so he could fall in step with Eren. “So, no one builds a wall that tall unless there’s a reason. Walls get built to keep out dangers effectively, and don’t really compensate for _possible_ dangers,” he commented to the boy.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to keep titans out… you know what those are?” Noctis shook his head. It seemed unfathomable to meet someone who didn’t know, but the entire scenario seemed crazy. Did the Captain hit him in the head too hard? “They’re these giant creatures that look sort of like us, and also eat us. They’re usually… I don’t know, usually four to seven meters tall, but we’ve seen one that’s over seventy. The wall’s fifty meters.”

“Jeez, only the Astrals are big like that in my world,” Noctis remarked.

“Astrals?” Eren questioned.

“Oh, sorry. The gods of our world,” Noctis went on to explain. “I’ve only seen two so far, but they say the others are as big, if not bigger.”

“Wild…” Eren murmured. It wasn’t like he could say he didn’t believe it. The whole situation was so weird, it couldn’t even possibly be a dream. He didn’t understand how anyone _could_ treat it normally.

“So, what’s your emblem stand for?” Noctis went on to ask, nodding to the patch on Eren’s lapel, and again to the larger one on his back.

“Oh, uh. The Wings of Freedom. The crest of the Scout Regiment, or Recon Regiment,” Eren said, after looking down, as if he needed to remind himself.

“Military, then?” Eren nodded somberly. “Cool.” Noctis looked ahead to Dante. “What about you, Big Red? What’s your deal?”

“Demon hunter by night. Demon hunter by day. All around awesome badass,” Dante replied passively.

“Daemons. You’re a hunter?” Noctis asked, scrunching his nose. “What’re daemons in your world?” There was no way someone like that was hunting daemons as he knew them to be. He’d never met a Hunter like that.

“Hellspawn. Immortal beings of evil. Pains in my ass and the reason my dry cleaning bill’s through the roof.”

“Demons, not daemons then…”

Eren stared up at Noctis. “’Demons, not demons’ makes no sense.”

“No, that’s not—they’re spelled different,” Noctis insisted. “One is ‘d-e-m-o-n-s’ and the other is ‘d-a-e-m-o-n-s’.” As he spelled them out, he pointed to Dante, then himself, to indicate what he meant, as if that was the edge of clarification that Eren needed.

Much to his surprise, Eren just continued to stare at him, and said, “I have no idea what you’re spelling.”

“Oh, God, he’s illiterate,” Dante feigned in despair.

“I’m not illiterate!”

“There are other ways of writing! You can’t be that dumb!” Noctis spat at Dante, in Eren’s defense. To Eren, he said, “Sorry.”

“Eh, it’s fine. So what are the other kinds of demons for you…?”

“Don’t know. Not really. They can infect other lifeforms, and have been around for a couple thousand years,” Noctis replied honestly. “They live in the darkness and in the night. The light kills them.” He tapped at a flashlight pinned to his own lapel. “That’s what this is for. It doesn’t stop an attack if you’re out at night, but you can blind them and get the upper hand.”

“Huh. The titans shut down after dark,” Eren commented. It was an interesting opposite. He wondered though. “Hey, Dante—”

“No, they don’t shut down at night and light doesn’t kill them,” the older man replied, still not looking back at them. “Emo, noticed you didn’t mention your job.”

“Oh. I’m just headed to my wedding. I help with hunting daemons sometimes, so I guess I’m a Hunter.”

“Oh, they do child marriages in your world?”

“ _I_ _’m twenty._ ”

“Something’s wrong with this place,” Dante commented. He came to a stop at an intersection, looking around.

The intersection had aspects all three could understand. The streets were worn cobblestone and dirt, like Eren was used to seeing. The buildings carried the Victorian, steampunk architecture that Dante came from. Meanwhile, the technology that blipped the traffic lights, and controlled the massive flatscreen monitors that radiated an eerie, nonstop blue haze, were familiar to Noctis. There was an eerie fog that increased the screens’ glow, breaking apart the light into fainter, wider, hazier pockets.

“There’s no one around,” Noctis remarked.

“Yeah, and nah,” Dante replied, earning a confused look from Noctis. “No one else who is human, that I can sense.” His eyes scanned every detail he could, meticulous in his search.

“Dante, do you know something that could do this…?” Noctis asked.

“Not with more than one person being affected, no,” the older man answered grimly.

“What are you guys _talking_ about?” Eren pressed. His equipment clattered a bit as he rounded around, in front of them. “I’m really confused, guys, so anything you could say to _clue me in_ would be great.”

Noctis sighed a little and met Eren’s green eyes with his own blues. “We don’t know. We don’t know why we’re here, or how this is happening. But we need to get tuned in to one another really quick if we wanna get outta here. You a lone wolf or do you work in a team?”

“…is that a rhetorical—”

“No, what the hell, it’s not rhetorical.”

“I’m a soldier. We work in teams but know how to work alone. What the hell about you two?”

“I work alone, except when people chain themselves to me,” Dante grumbled. Not once did he actually look at either younger male, too busy watching the world around them.

Eren looked to Noctis expectantly. “I can work in a team, but we need to sync up to work effectively together. That means understanding what we can do, how we talk, and how to strategize.”

“Thinking makes my brain hurt, so you can do it,” Dante yawned, stretching his shoulders. “You’re the one in the red-bottoms, and the threads that look like they cost as much as my business.” Noctis looked down at his own clothes, including his ‘red bottom’ jump boots, without speaking. Damn, he’d never gotten called out on the expense of his clothes before.

Eren just looked confused.

“Alright… basic rundown of skills. We all use swords.”

“I don’t see your sword,” Eren pointed out.

“Ew, don’t say it like that,” Dante mocked.

“I don’t—what?!”

Noctis held his hand out to the side, and allowed his sword to materialize in a shock of crystals. It was his engine sword, complete with the strengthening and magic machinery above the hilt, and below the blade. Eren jumped back like he’d produced a body, and Dante still looked passive and bored.

“So, we all use swords. I have other bladed weapons, and a gun and crossbow. Dante has guns. Either of you use magic?”

“Nope,” Dante replied blandly. He’d just let Noctis be irritated when he totally used something like magic later, if it was needed.

“No…” Eren said in a tone that sounded much more unsure than he intended. It earned looks from both older guys, and he just stared back at them.

Noctis sighed and closed his eyes. God help him. “Eren, what’s that gear you’re wearing?”

“This?” Eren looked down at the equipment strapped to him.

“Yeah, I see you’re locked in with all those harness straps.”

“You look like you’re from anime,” Dante commented.

“What’s an ‘anime’?” Eren asked, confused. Dante grabbed his chest as if someone had shot him at that question.

“What’s it for?”

Eren tore his eyes from Dante once more, to speak at Noctis. “Omni-directional maneuvering gear. It lets us fight the titans in three dimensions, that’s what they describe it as.”

“Cool,” Noctis said, genuinely fascinating as he looked over the way it looked and how it was strapped on Eren. “So that means two of us can move in unconventional ways. I’m gathering Dante won’t tell us, if he can.”

“Wait—oh, magic?” Eren asked, earning a nod from Noctis. “Damn, I wish I had that.”

“Yeah, that shit looks heavy. But if you can use it effectively, that gives us a broader range we can search through.”

“Uh uh,” Dante then protested, looking down at the two. He was as tall as Gladio, Noctis thought. It was weird, because Ravus was the only other person he knew to be so tall. “We’re not going far from one another.”

“What, you suddenly concerned?” Noctis asked with a snort.

“Yeah.”

That was were Dante left it, as he turned and went down the street to his right, waving his free hand to beckon them along with him. Eren and Noctis exchanged baffled looks at the tonal shift of his attitude, but it definitely didn’t seem logical to fight about that, so they started to trudge after him.

For Eren Jaeger in particular, he felt a bit queasy at how uneasy he felt. He couldn’t tell if it was nerves, or if something in the air was making him sick, but either way, he didn’t understand anything going on, anything he was seeing, other than really, the sight of the wall in the distance. He just hoped Noctis and Dante really could help return to normal.

Or that he would wake up and wonder how the hell he thought something like that up. That would be nice, too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren learns that the ocean sucks because giant squad exist, and Dante continues to be Dante.
> 
> Information about Noctis is obtained.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I wasn’t expecting really any Kudos…es… within 24 hours of posting the first one. You madlads and lasses provided them, though, and well…
> 
> Being the attention starved creature I am, here you go, friends!
> 
> Now, with slightly more narrative!

Nothing had happened as they walked for about an hour, snaking through the streets of that bizarre place. Dante continued to try to track the scent he was keyed into, but to no real success. He even began to get a bit irritated.

The idea to scale the wall came when they reached it. Noctis and Dante would have to jump up in segments, with the supernaturally strong older man slamming weapons into the side of the wall and leaping upward to repeat. Noctis, meanwhile, streaked upwards in segments that involved throwing a dagger he produced from that crystal-like magic, and ‘warping’—as he called it—up to catch it. The move involved a brilliant streak of blue and purple light, leaving Eren a bit mystified. The strength behind Dante at his size, and that magic from Noctis, were incredible to witness.

He didn’t fully appreciate how the two paused when he launched his ODM cables up, anchoring high on the wall, and then running along it as the device pulled him for the top of the wall. To them, it seemed like something like that couldn’t exist in any practical function.

Something Noctis expressed as he slammed his dagger into the wall and watched, and earned a reply of, “Something I say about my family all the time,” from Dante.

It actually prompted a short laugh from Noctis. Dante was kind of alright, and so was Eren.

By the time they reached the top, Eren was already there, standing over some sort of rail track system. Silhouettes of cannons stood in the distance of each side of them, blocked by the hazy fog that wasn’t so thick to feel too obstructive, but was thick enough to hinder them from looking too far ahead in any great detail. Large objects were clear; their finer points weren’t.

His eyes were fixed on the beyond, on the span after the wall. Noctis slowly trailed over to his side, looking out as well. “Ever been up here in your world?” he asked.

“Yeah, a few times,” the boy replied, not tearing his eyes away from that span beyond. “All it is is plains… bushes, pockets of trees and titans.”

Instead, there, it was a desolate wasteland. A former city, brought to ruins.

“Whose is this?” Dante asked as he passed them, to stand right on the outer edge.

“…mine,” Noctis said quietly. The two glanced at him. “My home behind the Wall. That stuff—” He jutted a thumb behind him, to mean the massive buildings that towering over the remnants belonging to both Dante and Eren. “—was before. My home’s been losing a war. The other side offered a ceasefire, but it was just a rouse to get in close and to kill my—mm. The people in leadership there. They brought it to ruin in a single night because Insomnia hadn’t been strong enough.”

“The hell kind of name is ‘Insomnia’?” Dante prodded.

“It’s named after the Founder King, Somnus,” Noctis answered, not biting onto that bait.

Eren pursed his lips, thinking for a bit. “Maybe it’s actually pulling from our hearts, not our minds,” he suggested quietly. Noctis looked at him, curious. “Last time I saw my mom, it was running along those paths to find my house had collapsed on her.” He tore his eyes from the desolation beyond, looking to Noctis. “I can’t… really remember anything but those streets, when I dream about that day. The buildings were a blur, running to her, and being forced away because the house was too heavy.”

“I’m sorry,” Noctis replied quietly, sympathetically. “Maybe you’re right, though, Eren.” He looked to Dante, who had been watching the two in silence from the ledge. “And what about you?”

“Well, I saw a strip club I’m pretty fond of back there,” the elder man quipped.

Noctis let out a disgusted snort. Eren started to ask what a strip club was, but Noctis quickly stopped that with, “If you’re right, then we should be able to find more places that mean something personally to us. I haven’t really been looking.” It was clear Dante wanted a barrier between them and details of his life for as long as that strange place allowed it. So, Noctis let him have it. Eren, on the other hand, was more emotional. He’d need support in that vein.

“I was kind of hoping the sea could be seen here,” Eren said then, almost as if he hadn’t heard Noctis. “But… I guess since I don’t know if it’ll mean something once I do, it wouldn’t be here… not unless it meant something to one of you two…”

“The sea?” Noctis asked. “You mean the ocean? You’ve never seen the ocean?”

“It’s too far away, if it exists at all.”

Noctis was too dumbfounded to know what to say. Did he really come from a world with no ocean? No, that wasn’t possible. He described plains and trees. Even if all the water was underground, it would’ve left the surface a desert, right?

“Eh, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Dante said, in what kind of sounded like he was trying to console the kid. “It has giant squid, which’re worse than any demon. They’re all creepy and eat humans.”

“Titans are creepy and eat humans.”

Dante pointed at Eren as he swaggered around. “That sounds like a good point, but do titans have tentacles?”

“What? No. Wait—what?”

“It’s all fun and games until you get a tentacle up your ass. Ask that one there.” He pointed at Noctis.

“Why does that sound racist?” Noctis asked, his voice bland in its tone.

“Well, probably because it is.”

Eren made a face at all of that, and looked out again. “Noctis… how should we proceed…?” There were points that Noctis sounded more like a leader than he or Dante did, so maybe he had some sort of experience in commanding?

“Hm.” Noctis turned and paced across the wall, back to view the inside carefully. He didn’t speak for the longest moment as he actually studied each of the Insomnian buildings he could see, instead of dismissing them as backdrop only.

That was when he saw the Citadel, standing off on the other side of that city. He couldn’t even see it before, from the street. He blanched out a bit, as blood left his face, but he coughed soon and shook his head clear. “There,” he said after a quiet moment. “If the interiors are accurate like the exteriors, we’ll find more weapons there. Food. And if anyone I know is here… they’ll be there.”

“Fat chance in Hell anyone’s there, but more weapons and maybe some food’ll be good for two growing boys.”

“Oh, fuck off, Dante,” Noctis blurted.

Dante just grinned as he watched Noctis warp off, to take the lead to their next stop.

***

Eren found himself enjoying the much taller architecture in terms of his ODM gear, and staring up at the structures Noctis called ‘sky scrapers’, he was mystified how it was even possible to build something so tall.

Such was the case as they walked into the grounds of the so-called Citadel. Everything was massive, from the gates in, to the bridging hovering over dark pools below, to the building itself. It felt like staring at the Colossal Titan… no. This was taller, he believed. It was such a dark and gold piece of art, and he was worried they didn’t belong there, even after Noctis insinuating it would be fine.

Even then, he walked up the ridiculously large staircase, for the front doors, like he belonged there. Eren supposed to made sense, when he looked at how the young man was dressed, compared to the building. They seemed to match, though Eren couldn’t explain how other than, ‘Er, look! Black!’ so he said nothing.

Noctis stopped right after he passed through doors made of glass and metal, though Eren didn’t see that, eyes looking over the structure of the doors, and he ended up slamming into him. He started to apologize, but stopped short when the appearance of a familiar, glowing copper caught his eyes, and he slowly shuffled his gaze ahead of them, as well.

Body after body laid, torn asunder. Not like titans, not like demons. Gunfire, blades, explosions were the culprits of those victims.

“…is this what happened?” Eren asked after a long, quiet silence.

Noctis tried to hide the deep breath he took to steel himself. “I think so,” he finally said. “I wasn’t here, but I heard the stories.”

He straightened himself at the shoulders, and started to walk forward. He tried to avoid blood where he could, but it wasn’t always possible, and when he lifted his boots out of some, he could feel the mess had grown tacky. Too fresh to be dry, and too old to be slick. It made his stomach turn.

The other two followed him to a hall that Eren discovered had functional lifts when Noctis pressed a button, and a set of doors opened to the right. There were apparently eight lifts, then, by the look of it. That place must’ve been so busy, normally.

As they started their ascent, Noctis pressing a button for a rather high floor without hesitation, Eren looked to him. “What is this place to you?”

“I grew up here,” he replied somberly, staring at the floor marker above the doors.

When they reached the floor in question, they were greeted by more bodies. The uniforms of the apparent soldiers were so ornate compared to the tan and brown of Eren’s uniform, he wondered why Noctis thought his was so interesting. Hell, both Noctis and Dante were ornate in appearance themselves. There were so many little details to everything they wore. He wondered if there was significance.

A lobby they started to pass through caused Eren to slow down a bit. Art on the walls in particular caught his attention. Art wasn’t a thing in most places, outside of Wall Sina anyway, so he was intrigued. Noctis wasn’t giving him much time to view it all though, as he took a hard right suddenly, and went through a set of double doors.

It was a throne room, and Noctis stopped before he could start ascending towards a throne that stood high up from that point.

The look on his face made something click to both Dante and Eren, and they ended up looking at one another from each side of him.

The Citadel was a palace, and a place Noctis grew up in… A palace, a throne…

“You’re royalty,” Eren said in quiet epiphany.

“Never wanted to be,” Noctis replied, not looking away from the empty throne.

“…and this place was burned to the ground. You’re the heir, aren’t you?”

“I’m just Noctis right now,” was the quiet response.

At least it made sense as to why he seemed a bit better at leading, Eren guessed. It’d be hard not to be, when you were born to become a leader…

“We need food, kids,” Dante reminded, turning to the two. “This is nothing but a fabrication by something that thinks it’s funny. Stop focusing on this tomb and figure out what it can do for us.”

“Right,” Noctis agreed with a deep breath. “There’s a kitchen on this floor, and on every second floor,” he went on to say. “And there’s an armory on every odd floor, though the best one is on the eleventh. That’s where the Crownsguard would train.”

“Then we’ll head there after hitting up the kitchen on this floor. It’s the throne’s floor, so the food’s gotta be good.”

“I guess,” Noctis said, his tone devoid of any telling emotion, which the youngest of the group keyed into fast.

“This is _stupid_ ,” Eren suddenly blurted out, the two looked at him. He pointed at Noctis. “Aren’t you mad?! Aren’t you hurt? Yeah, you lost a parent, I understand that—but you lost your kingdom, too, didn’t you? Why aren’t you screaming?!”

Noctis… well, he had to admire that fire. He never had that. Not to that degree. Not that he wasn’t passionate, but he didn’t like people staring and they always stared anyway, so he wasn’t about to give them his feelings, too.

“Of course I’m mad, and hurt,” he said after a stunned silence. “But—”

“Royalty doesn’t have time for tears, kid,” Dante said then, calm as ever. “If your leader is crying, that means you’ve lost everything.”

“He’s only twenty! He should be allowed—”

“Even if he was ten, he wouldn’t be allowed.” That caused Eren to actually take a step back, the concept completely incomprehensible to him. He would be angry until the day he died, over the loss of his mother, his friends, his home. Of the by-then-tens of men and women who had laid down their lives for him. He would never hide it; he would never go silent regarding it. Dante said it with such finality, too. The larger man stepped over to Eren, looking him right in the eyes. “So what you do, is you be his anger for him, if you care so much. I don’t, so it’s on you.”

Eren continued to stare, his mouth hanging open. Noctis simply patted him on the shoulder and started for the doors again. It was nice to see it, one last time, he felt, and his notable lack of correcting Dante was telling on its own.

Just as Eren went to speak, there was a shift. Not from Dante, who walked silent despite moving like a broken horse. Not from Noctis, who somehow could walk with dead silence or like a bull on a hollow floor.

Instead, it was behind them, by the throne, soft yet piercing in the otherwise silent world around them.

All three paused and slowly turned.

Something dark and green stepped out of sight, too quick to see more than a form and color, into thin air, yet like stepping behind a wall.

“Dante,” Noctis said quickly.

Dante rushed forward, and jumped inhumanly high, going from the base of the massive staircases leading to the throne, to the throne itself. Using his sword, he tested the air where the figure disappeared. The portal, or whatever it used, was no longer there.

“Nothing.”

Eren was starting to feel queasy again, but he said nothing on it.

“But that was definitely a demon.” The world was pungent with them, so Dante wasn’t too surprised he didn’t pick up on it sooner. Irritated, but not surprised. “We’re being watched.”

“All the more reason to stay together and cooperate with one another,” Noctis decided.

“I don’t understand why, though,” Eren said, patting at his stomach subconsciously.

Dante jumped back down near them, his sword going back to his shoulder as he closed in to the duo. “Demons thrive on everything humans can give to them that’s bad and ugly. Hate, anger, sorrow. It makes them all atwitter.” He looked to Noctis and gestured to Eren. “All the more reason that we need to keep a close eye on this one.”

“Got it,” Noctis said without hesitation, eyes wide.

Eren huffed at that, but could he really argue the logic?

“Food, weapons. Next stop?” Dante then asked.

“We find the places that mean something to each of you,” Noctis directed, not needing to even think. “If we’re being watched, and our emotions are making them visible even for a second, then we do it again, and again, and again until a window opens to grab that thing.”

“Sounds like a plan, Prince Noctis,” Dante said as he strutted past, to leave the throne room. Noctis watched him go, a little puzzled, only because he hated being called by a title, but he was learning he hated ‘king’ far more than ‘prince’. His only defense had been that there’d been no time for a coronation. Though, Dante seemed a lot more observant and intelligent than he let on, so he probably knew both those things, and ‘prince’ was a way to irritate him and mind him, too. “We stick together. If the spooks come out, I handle ‘em. If the daemons come out, you handle ‘em. If the titans come out, Midriff handles ‘em.”

“No way—we work as a team in all three cases!” Noctis protested, stomping after him quickly.

Eren lingered behind, looking back up at the throne for a quiet moment. That queasiness subsided. He wondered if it had something to do with that mysterious… thing. He wanted to be afraid, but he wasn’t getting enough time to even process what they just saw.

Finally, he reeled on his heel and jogged to catch up with the two. They were right. They’d be stronger together than apart. He’d just spend time wondering how effective someone so strong, agile and magically-inclined as the two would do against titans. That would prepare him, if somehow, some showed up.

That, and he’d be thinking about how to explain this to his friends and the Levi Squad. He was pretty sure they’d be convinced he had some severe brain damage after Captain Levi kicked his head into the courtroom floor a few dozen times.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [gets on megaphone]
> 
> DANTE DOES NOT HAVE MOMMY ISSUES.
> 
> REPEAT, THE MAN WHOSE ONLY MOTIVATION IN HIS FIRST APPEARANCE WAS CHASING A DEMON DESIGNED TO LOOK LIKE HIS MOTHER  
> DOES  
> NOT  
> HAVE  
> MOMMY  
> ISSUES

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone get Eren a fainting sofa that's approximately 50 feet long, please.
> 
> Thank you for reading this nonsense!

“I know someone like you.”

“Like me how?”

“He can sniff things out, things no one else can.”

Dante glanced at Eren at that. “That’s weird.”

“What the—you do the same thing!”

“With demons, yeah! Your world doesn’t have that problem, right? So, that’s weird. Smelling out man-eating giants is weird.”

Eren ended up just staring out ahead of them, reminding Noctis of Ignis when Noctis did or said something profoundly stupid. It was funny on Ignis, and it was funny on Eren, even if Noctis did nothing more than smirk a bit.

On Noctis’s suggestion, they used the Citadel as their compass. He knew its grand entrance faced west, so they had explored a narrow portion of the south. After storing a bunch of food, water and extra weapons into his Armiger, they headed out, due southwest.

The concept of the Armiger was something that both Dante and Eren were confused about, especially after Noctis’s shoddy explanation. He said it was like a pocketed space outside of their dimension, and he could store nearly anything in it, so long as it wasn’t too large, and wasn’t alive. Eren briefly wondered if that was something like Hange spoke on about the titans and their lack of weight, while Dante advised Noctis he wasn’t a ‘biologist, so he had no idea what any of that meant’. Noctis gave up and declared, “Magic whoosh thing brings inflatable girlfriend not real wife!”

It made Dante laugh.

The haze around them had grown a little denser since they first arrived, and there was an eeriness that was starting to nag at Noctis through his stomach and spine. He couldn’t say what it was. Maybe it was playing horror games too much shortly before he left on his wedding trip.

“Well, isn’t this a blast from the past?” Dante commented after a while of walking through the dead streets for some time.

He took a soft left, moving into a street with two dead ends, and a building with a collapsed entryway. There were no signs, so no indicating what the building was supposed to be, but Dante climbed up the debris and jumped through a hole anyway. Noctis was quick to usher Eren up and through first, and he followed behind with a warp.

Inside, the remnants of some sort of lived-in area rested in darkness, and Noctis turned on his lapel light to help them look around, while producing two spares from his Armiger for them, the items appearing the same crystal-like magic burst like his weapons did. He tossed one to Dante, and went to help Eren put the other on his uniform jacket.

“What is this place?” Eren asked after thanking Noctis for the help.

“This was my first shop,” Dante mused. He stooped down and picked up a pool ball, spinning it in his hand. “I only had it for like a week before my asshole of a brother trashed it.”

“Your brother? Why’d he do that?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

Noctis turned once the lapel light was fixed on the teenager, and looked to the pool table that ball belonged two, where it was cut in halves on different parts of the room. “What happened to the pool table?”

“Demons. Had to cut it in half while fighting them. Again, because Vergil’s an asshole.” He moved around to a toppled desk. “This is interesting,” he remarked. He picked up a picture frame from the floor, turning it over to the picture within. “I took this when I moved to my next shop. This shouldn’t be here. It’s not even of my last memory here.”

“That’s weird,” Noctis admitted, while Eren tiptoed over, looking around the large man.

“Whoa, that’s a really good painting.”

Dante looked down at him. “Painting? It’s a photograph.”

“A… what?”

“They don’t even have cameras?” Noctis asked Dante, turning and raising an eyebrow. Eren’s world was so _interesting_.

“It’s weird as hell.”

“Kinda.”

Eren looked between the two. “Why’s it weird?”

Dante gestured at Noctis to go ahead. “Societies will always evolve towards the things that matter the most to them, and the most development societies experience come out of war,” Noctis explained, resting his hands on his hips. “But you don’t know about any of the technology we talk about, but you have that ODM gear. I know it sounds like I’m like… fixating on that, and I kind of am. I can’t think of a single engineer in my world who could create that without using magitek, which is a fusion of magic and technology and allows for more sophisticated designs. But we have… everything technological we’ve seen here otherwise.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Eren said, making a face. “I mean, I could guess maybe it’s because our government’s shady.”

“Ah. What do they do?”

“Ban books, mostly. Old books that talk about places outside the Walls.”

Eren continued explaining what sort of books he’d seen that were technically illegal in his world, but Dante wasn’t listening. He was looking at the picture, and at the remains of that shop, digging for an emotional reaction. Sad fact was, as people got older and aged away from events, some things just didn’t hurt enough to be worth noting. It still all hurt, but he was a bitter man who had sunken into habit over emotion. He’d taken out the creature that destroyed his family, and his desire to kill Vergil had long since outweighed the wish they could just go back to being as they were when they were kids.

It hurt more when they worked together, though, and in the aftermath of the Qliphoth, it seemed Vergil had regained some of his humanity back, though he was hardly redeemed.

He supposed it was sad, mostly because of Nero not getting a chance to have a normal father.

Eren shrugged off what he was saying and stretched a bit as that queasiness started to return. “You alright?” Noctis asked him, watching him carefully.

“Well, look at this,” Dante interrupted. He tossed the framed photo over his shoulder—it wasn’t real, so he didn’t feel the need to guard it—and moved around, towards a shadowy part of the large room.

Noctis and Eren looked in that direction, and Eren took a step back, his eyes going wide, while Noctis swept in front of him, like a shield. Eren wanted to tell him that he should’ve been protecting Noctis, but the pale figure, that was formless yet somehow had a form, bathed in shadow that didn’t break even with the lapel light on Dante’s coat, was too much for him to find words. He felt dizzy, sick, and grabbed Noctis’s arm.

“Who the hell are you?” Dante asked the form. “Trying to figure out who to mimic?” he asked when the form shifted, swayed, and grew a few inches. “Kinda hard to figure out when I don’t give a fuck, huh? You definitely should’ve taken the kid. Then again, he’s like a killer bee. Everyone pisses him off. You’d struggle with him, too.”

“What the hell is that, Dante?” Noctis asked. He bent his arm back to Eren, recognizing something was wrong and the kid needed an anchor, but not willing to turn his back to that creature.

“No clue. It’s demonic, but it’s not the same as the last one. This one’s trying to key into me, looks like,” Dante said. He reached behind him, and pulled out a white pistol that he spun around for no reason other than to be ridiculously flashy, and then trained it on the creature. “Come on. Demons love to talk and talk and talk! Look at me! So what has you so quiet?”

There was no response that came, aside from the creature stepping back, deeper into shadows, and disappearing. As soon as the figure vanished, Dante’s light broke through the darkness, and showed the cracked wall as it should have all along.

“’Look at you’?” Noctis echoed, slowly looking to Dante.

“Half demon, half human,” Dante announced, spinning the pistol again before holstering it. “Mom had a dangerous taste in men, I guess.” He looked at Noctis. “What, you think someone as handsome as I am is all human?”

“Something’s happening,” Eren murmured. Noctis tore his eyes off of Dante, and turned to grab Eren by the elbow. “I keep feeling sick whenever these things come around. Do you…?”

“I haven’t been, no,” Noctis said with a frown. He pulled Eren over to sit on the toppled desk. “Sit and rest a minute, kid.”

Eren did so, though he was feeling better. Why was he getting sick, but not Noctis? Could it be from his…

“You need to communicate when you start feeling that way,” Dante advised. “Let’s see if you detect it before I do.”

“Yeah, I can do that…”

Noctis was still watching Eren with a healthy amount of concern, but also tried to consolidate what happened. “Do you really think these things are trying to mimic people we know, Dante?”

“I don’t know it for sure, no, but it was clearly less formed than the other, and was changing shape like it was trying to decide what to look like. God, shapeshifters are annoying. They never know what they want.”

“Boo,” Noctis said at the stupid joke. At least it wasn’t a pun cycle like he and his friends would get into, he supposed. He looked back to Eren. “Are you alright…?”

“Yeah,” Eren said with a nod of his head. “We should get moving, I think.”

Noctis nodded in agreement, though he actually really thought they should give Eren longer to rest. If he was continuously getting sick, it was going to drain him faster than if he was just walking around with them.

“Let’s press on, and the first place we can find that we can guard easily and rest in turns, let’s stop there for a while,” Noctis said. “Nothing too open, someplace with no windows. Two stay awake, one sleeps.” He looked to Dante. “Sound good?”

“Fine by me. I’m pretty done with this place, anyway. These things picked the wrong old guy for this.”

“Is that why you mentioned ‘the kid’?” Eren asked as he eased off his seat.

“Nero, my nephew,” Dante said coolly, strutting for that hole back out. “Good kid, despite being the spawn of my brother. Emotional as hell, though.”

Instead of leaping back out the hole, Dante raised a foot up, and slammed it into the stone debris in front of him, the massive, busted slabs shooting out with the inhuman force he struck them with. The pieces flipped across the street in several directions, slamming into fencing, a dumpster and more.

Although Dante continued out with his typical calm swagger, both Noctis and Eren had to wonder if they witnessed something of an outburst just then from him. Did the old man feel more than he let on…?

Well, it had to be that, if being there manifested one of those things… whatever they were.

They just had to hope the next stop, no matter who it was for, would get them even closer to catching one than that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren is feral af boiii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note I have no beta.
> 
> Typos will be a consistent bonus to your experience.

Their rest stop came in the form of a humble janitor’s room, in a subway entry that had caved in further along in the corridor. It was a place Noctis had passed plenty in his lifetime, and would be a lifesaver later in his life.

For right then, it served as the perfect place to toss Eren in and order him to rest.

Most the time was spent with Noctis and Dante playing a round of Go Fish, after Noctis realized Dante was shit at poker.

When Noctis went to rest as Eren shambled out from just a couple hours’ rest, Dante was feeling like quite the power player, teaching Eren how to play poker as badly as he played it.

They learned that Noctis slept like a log, which Dante remarked seemed a little funny. “Why?” Eren asked, as Dante kicked the little prince in the side just enough to make him roll on the mattress that rested against concrete. There was a bedframe in there, but it had broken when they entered, so the floor it was.

“He’s pretty keyed into everything around us. He should be way more paranoid than this. Plus, you really think a prince sleeps in a place like this?”

“W-Well, no… but he lost his home, so we don’t really know where he’s sleeping.”

Dante snorted at that, and when his gentle kicking didn’t work, he hauled off and struck the side of the mattress, causing it to lift up and sending Noctis off and into the concrete wall. “Dante!” Eren protested.

“Mother fucker!” blurted Noctis, voice muffled against the cold slab he just struck. He shoved off of it and began a ridiculous set of flailing to try to roll, and position himself for standing. “Did you have to do that?!”

“Mouth of a sailor, sleeping habits of a princess,” Dante mocked, grabbing Noctis’s arms and hoisting him up. “You were basically comatose for four hours.”

“I was tired,” the 20-year-old bitched.

“Uh huh.” Dante watched him critically for a second, before stepping aside and dipping into a sarcastic bow. “After you, your Highness.”

Noctis grumbled and shuffled along, out of that small room. It was then, as he moved, that Eren noticed a rather pronounced gimp in his gait. “Hey, your leg okay, Noctis?” he asked, rushing to his side.

“Huh?”

“He’s had that this whole time, kid,” Dante said, following up on the rear. “He’s just forgetting his princely training on how to walk right. That’s why you can see it better now.”

“Nice,” Noctis grumbled over his shoulder at Dante.

“You did? He did?” Eren asked Noctis, then Dante. He looked back to Noctis. “Did you get hurt before coming here?”

“Something like that.”

Noctis was going to leave it at that, but Eren kept staring at him. Up the stairs, out into the open, starting their western path, Eren was staring expectantly at him.

“What, you want the story?” Noctis asked, a little baffled.

“If you’ve got an injury, we should know how severe, right?” Eren questioned in the worst attempt to cover up that he just wanted details ever.

Noctis snorted a bit. “It’s not that I’m injured. I was injured a long time ago.” After stretching out his back, the odd cycle to his walk disappeared. That ‘princely training’ comment from Dante suddenly made sense. “Someone tried to kill me when I was a kid. Damage like that stays with you, that’s all.”

“Oh, God… I’m sorry, I thought you’d say you warped badly or something,” Eren quickly amended, frowning all the more.

That made Noctis feel sort of bad. “Nah, don’t apologize. Sorry to be short. A lot of people died for me that day is all.”

“Oh… how… old were you, if you don’t mind me asking?” Eren knew all too well how it felt for people to lay down their lives for him. He wanted to know more, just out of curiosity, but wanted to try to avoid that part of it. It sounded as if Noctis was as hard on himself about it as Eren was on himself.

“…I was eight,” Noctis said.

“Oh. I’m sorry. What happened to the person who tried…?”

“Dead. My dad showed up just before the job could be finished, and he and the Crownsguard handled the soldiers and daemon that were sent.” There was a level of detachment from his voice. Noctis didn’t talk about the situation often. If he did, it was normally with Ignis only. Ignis was the only one he had when it happened, when it came to people around his age, and Ignis understood. People had tried, in the past, because the attempt hadn’t been secret. Plenty of news reports, vlogs, blogs, books written about his family history, if it was used to convey information, something existed talking about the attempt.

“Good,” Eren said with an impressive level of final approval. “People who hurt kids are aren’t really people, and you put down a dog if it bites a kid, right?”

Noctis raised his eyebrows and looked at Eren. Wow. “Ruthless,” he said, somewhere between impressed and wondering what the hell was in Eren’s past that made him so confident in saying that.

“Am I wrong?”

“Not at all. My best friend would be pretty offended at the dog part though,” Noctis commented, getting a faint laugh out of Eren.

As they walked, the buildings around them started to change. The street’s worn dirt and cobblestone started to refine, like they were entering a wealthier area that could afford upkeep, and the buildings went from that consistent combination from Dante’s world and Noctis’s world, to an architecture Noctis related to Altissia, and to Dante, it looked like a brighter Fortuna. It wasn’t a direct match though, and so Dante was left wondering where it belong.

It was when they hit a bridge that it registered for Eren. He stood there, staring over it and beyond it, as Dante and Noctis went to the edge and gazed down. There was no water there. At least, the normal kind. If one asked Noctis, it looked like when the textures failed to load due to a pixel error in a video game, so the water’s colors turned black, with just streaks of shimmer when the water bowed upward. Like a black abyss with waving rays of light.

No, Noctis would never stop comparing things to video games when it was apt, shut up.

“Shit,” Eren finally said, once what he was seeing was done processing fully. He started over the bridge, heading for a large building with massive columns and the definite feel of a government installation.

“What is it?” Noctis asked, pushing off the railing and hurrying after him.

“I was at this courthouse a few weeks ago,” the boy answered. “I was on trial here.”

“Court-marshaled when you’re still green in service, huh?” Dante mused. “You’ve got a bright future, kid.”

“It wasn’t my fault--”

“That’s what they always say.”

“--but I’m not sure why this would be here if they want us emotional,” the teenager, the sweet summer child he was, commented.

He pushed inside when they arrived at its doors, moving through the dark foyer as he turned on that lapel light from Noctis. The other two did the same. Although it was dark outside, with not a single star or moon in the sky, a natural ambient light pervaded through the night air, so they didn’t need the lights out there.

The haze, that fog, remained whether they were inside or outside, however.

“Okay, so, what did you do?” Noctis pressed.

Eren wasn’t sure if either of them believed him, so he said nothing, pushing into the double-doors square opposite of the entry doors, leading into the large courtroom resting there.

The room was predictably devoid of any life, but in the center, the men noticed the pillar there, with shackles left abandoned nearby, detailing that someone would be shackled and anchored to that metal pillar. Surrounding that pillar, on tiled flooring and a slightly raised platform where the pillar jutted from, blood covered the area. It smeared over everything, or splattered unceremoniously. A glance up showed some even on the ceiling, on some artwork that was the typical dramatic, overly expensive fanfare one found in a place like that.

Eren stepped up on that small platform, looking at the floor, the mess there, and did feel a small, tight swell at feeling Captain Levi _beating the shit out of him_. He didn’t enjoy that one bit, even if he understood the necessity.

Then his eyes trailed over to the left, where Mikasa and Armin had been standing during that tribunal. Where he had seen Mikasa being accused of working ‘with him, against humanity’, of accusing her because they had the _audacity_ to…

“What happened here…?” Noctis asked as he approached Eren carefully.

“I was on trial because of something that came to light about me. Even after I used it to help them, they wanted to kill me,” Eren said, numb. “My best friends were there.” He pointed to that very specific space. “The military police accused Mikasa of being a criminal, too. They used the fact that we killed three animals who kidnapped her when we were kids, so they could sell her to some rich rapist behind Wall Sina to say we were dangerous, while admitting it was self-defense in the same breath.”

His eyes were hollow as he spoke. He felt so betrayed.

“I told them they were cowards. Miserable. That if they didn’t want to fight the titans, they should let me do. Trust in me. Levi, a captain in the only part of the military that wanted to use me as I should be used, swept in and beat the crap out of me. To prove that he could control me if need be. And Mikasa…”

Mikasa tried to dive in to stop him. It was only because Armin stopped her that she thankfully didn’t. He saw the anger and worry in her face before Levi started stomping on his head repeatedly.

Dante whistled at that story, looking at the blood everywhere around that platform. “So, you can take a beating. Not bad,” he remarked.

Before Eren could respond, that hollow, vacant look in his eyes twisted and he hunched a bit. “I’m getting sick,” he said, holding his stomach. “It’s worse than—”

The entire building shook violently then, like something had landed on top of it, or exploded within it. The doors on each side of the massive judge’s desk rattled hard. The ceiling fractured, and Noctis threw his arm out to allow for a shield—the sort one would see a knight carrying in old art, but with a more modern and bold cut on it—to appear on his arm, and he dove over to Eren to hold it over both of them, to guard from breaking plaster, wood and stone.

Dante, with his usual lack of concern, went straight to the doors on the left. He jumped over a railing, and ripped his massive sword off his back, in time with tearing open one of the two doors residing there, side by side.

He couldn’t say he was ready for what awaited him there.

Larger than both the doors, one of those fleshy yet shadowy demons was wedged firmly against the frame. Light from his lapel found solid mass, yet couldn’t pierce the shadows.

The difference was the eye that rolled to look at them. Edged and narrow, glowing yellow with no real discernible pupil, it meant nothing to Dante. It meant nothing to Noctis.

Eren, however, let out an angry scream, startling Noctis. Ripping his ODM controls off their braces on his chest straps, he slammed them down into the boxy compartments on each side of them. After a locking sound, he ripped out tiered blades, and took off running for it. He felt dizzy, nauseated, but he was going to kill that thing.

“Eren, what the hell!” Noctis blurted.

Dante sidestepped as Eren fired off both anchors, and they slammed onto each side of that doorway. Retracting them, it shot him off the ground and allowed him to strike at that eye with both blades, and he relaxed the cables enough to spin and dig in with a spiral.

The creature let out a roar that didn’t sound quite right to Eren, but he didn’t care. “How dare you try to take that face?!” he screamed at it, slashing and tearing, like he was going to crawl into its skull once the eye was open wide enough. Instead of blood, something that it should have emitted, gold liquid that glowed like those eyes poured out over him and onto the floor.

Another rumble broke through the building, heralding the vanishing of the fighting and squirming mass behind that wall. The sudden absence of something on which he could stand, all as he gashed away, caused him to flip forward on his cables and he just barely got his hands crossed over his face before his head slammed into the cold, marble floor.

“Well, you sure are spunky,” Dante remarked. He went over and ripped one of the anchors from the wall, causing the other cable to retract Eren right into the other, still-closed door, his floating ribs slamming into the edge of it.

“Careful, Dante!” Noctis snapped as he ran over.

Even without the lights, Eren was then glowing like a target, all because their shapeshifting stalkers didn’t understand blood was red. Eren just laid on the floor, staring at his glowing blades, sleeves, hands. He wanted to be angry that he was a walking target now, but all he could do was burn over the fact that the thing had keyed into his hatred for that specific titan.

“What was that, Eren?” Noctis asked, kneeling next to him.

“It was trying to turn into the Armored Titan,” Eren wheezed. He finally released the second anchor, and went to sit up, slowly. “Five—Five years ago, my home… two intelligent titans broke the gates to the wall of my district. Let the dumb ones, the pure titans, into there. My mom was eaten by one. A lot of people died. First was the Colossal Titan, who kicked in the outer gate. Next was the Armored Titan, who charged and broke in the inner gate.”

He held up a hand and the sword he held in it. “It’s all wrong though. Titans bleed red.”

“How big is it…?”

“About fifteen meters.”

“What the hell,” Noctis said, eyes wide. He looked up to Dante. “That’s about fifty feet.”

“I know that,” Dante said, sounding tired. “That’s just perfect.”

“I can fight it. I can,” Eren insisted. “I can fight it if it tries to hurt you guys.” He sounded angrier and angrier with each word. “I don’t care if it’s a real titan or not. If it wants to take the image of a titan, then I’ll _kill it like a titan_.”

“Hang on—” Noctis started.

“That’s what he does, Emo,” Dante reminded. “You think that shit he’s equipped with is just for pretending he’s in a jungle? It’s clearly built so a human can fight a giant. Let him do what he can do, when and if the time comes. Got it?”

Noctis sighed and took to looking at Eren. “Yeah. But I have one question, Eren.”

“What’s that?” the teenager asked, leaning to the side, to put a productive pressure on where he’d slammed into the door.

“Why’s your side smoking?”

Noctis pointed to that same side. Eren looked, and saw the telltale sign of healing steam.

Well.

Shit.

That was going to be an explanation they probably wouldn’t believe until he had to show them.


End file.
